Introduction

The study of protest and collective action is more established on academic agendas in the United States and in Europe than in Britain. This is perhaps slightly odd, given the extensive contemporary and historical significance of these issues in the making and remaking of British society. Processes of social transformation within capitalist society regularly throw existing patterns of life and moral assumptions into confusion, inviting forms of resistance and the elaboration of alternatives. The literature on social movements is essentially concerned with the creative responses groups make to the problems that capitalist development generates for them, as they search for means to control the potentially devastating effects on their lives of changes imposed from above and outside, and as they envision alternatives. A number of interrelated themes are woven into these essays. One of these is the widespread existence of oppositional ideas within modern society. Social movement theory, like its object of study, is in constant flux and development.